Thread by @leashless

A very quick thread on: Meditations on Moloch.

I think I've finally figured out what's wrong with this model. It's a story about *entropy* in effect.

(apparently I'm having one of those weekends where my unconscious mind just *unloads* the good stuff)

slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/med…

Ginsberg is the inspiration for the original Moloch piece, his poem Moloch.

Ginsberg also provides the solution, but by stating the problem clearly.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginsberg%…

Moloch is about ratchets. One person does something fucked up to win and all future winners do it too.

Moloch is simply the dark god of zero sum games, in particular iterated zero sum games.

The system as-envisaged lacks the "metaprogramming" ability to change its own rules: to ban cutting off your hand to win a race by throwing it over the finish line!

carnegiecouncil.org/publications/1…

So how does a system lose its ability to change the rules of the game to stop all game participants cutting off one hand to even have a chance of winning the game?

How do we lose the *ability* to change the rules to keep Moloch out of the game?

Answer? We lose GOVERNANCE.

Now this question is not a complex question: how do systems lose the ability to govern themselves?

It's all gone to shit? Pick somebody to sort it out. Support them. Keep an eye on them.

People have always done this in times of crisis. People *evolved* to do this. Tribalism.

There's no apparent reason that a nation in crisis, or a world in crisis, can't do this.

Churchill in WW2 is a good example: for all his flaws, better that man than an empty chair or a worse man.

So why aren't we simply appointing leaders to sort it out for us? Why no heroes?

We've put *enormous* amounts of time into dismantling the idea of human-as-hero, particularly human-male as hero. Everybody's gotta be corrupt. Anti-heroes everywhere.

Nixon really did a number on people. And they shot Kennedy. (Who did?)

And Gandhi. And MLK. And JFK. WAIIIITTT

So there's your answer.

The human system continues to generate heroes: flawed human beings who are elevated to a level of faith that we would permit them to change the rules of the system to defeat Moloch once more.

And then the intelligence agencies assassinate them.

Moloch as a great festering civilisation-containing beast is simply the product of Gandhi, MLK, JFK, RFK, Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba and how many others, being murdered. Mandela, and all the rest, jailed.

Here, I consider Julian Assange. A flawed hero for sure, but in a cage.

The human mechanism for projecting The Will of The People on to a single individual to Fix The Goddamn Problem has been interrupted because unaccountable intelligence assets in the labyrinthine hells of the military-industrial complex KEEP MOLOCH IN POWER BY KILLING THE WIZARDS.

Somebody comes along to banish some particularly awful piece of Moloch intrusion into the real world, and the CIA whacks them.

Think of doping in the Olympics. Athletes lives will be *much* worse (shorter) if they're allowed to take performance improving drugs. Moloch: halted.

Human beings would not have survived for millions of years in this environment if we did not have sensible levels of Moloch-resistance.

But after the invention of the nuke, the intelligence agencies run wild. The nuke belongs in the domain of infinite shadow. The spooks swarm.

Of course there's plenty of Moloch in Europe for the past thousand years. The Spanish Inquisition and all that.

And there's quite a bit of killing to protect it. The People keep throwing up heroes to liberate them (Ned Ludd!) and there is indeed a war. But rights and unions win.

But the original framing of Moloch envisages humans as trapped by game theory, unable to escape.

This is of course not true. We have built-in defences against lock-in: every generation of teenagers tries to break the game and escape.

If the game is weak? It does not serve? Gone

The Moloch model simply assumes that human beings are powerlessly trapped inside of systems, and that each new system is a cage.

In fact, human beings elect (not always by voting) heroes to get them out of the system they are stuck in, into another system. Moloch is beaten back.

And that cycle of Moloch taking power, then humans picking a hero to slay Moloch, then Moloch regenerating and returning?

It's as old as The Ouroboros. Moloch comes, and Moloch goes. It does not matter that the heroes are corrupt: other heroes watch them.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros